


Stand my ground, face my fears

by Builder



Series: Powers/No Powers Choose-Your-Own-Adventure [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amputee Bucky Barnes, Body Horror, Body mutilation, Bugs, But not that much, Car Accidents, Character Death, Dead animals, Fire, Homophobic Language, M/M, Major weirdness, Multiverse, Nightmares, NyQuil, Police Brutality, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Seizures, Sickfic, Swearing, Thunderstorms, Verbal Abuse, Violence, Vomiting, attempted suicide, but in a dream, but not too graphic, dream state, feels like twilight zone, hit and run, more like nausea and dry heaving, not for realz, shark week, uprooted trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 16:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11360994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Builder/pseuds/Builder
Summary: “Breathe, ok?” Steve says.  Bucky tries, but he coughs instead.  His lungs are empty, and he sniffs in a gust of air that smells like sweat and shampoo and Steve.__________________________________________Bucky's sick and assaulted by nightmares, inspired by the author's own head of demons.Can be read as either a simple sickfic or a convoluted mess of much, much more.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This one’s gonna be convoluted, for sure. If you’re only interested in the H/C, you can read just the beginning and the end and pretty much leave out the middle (spoiler: it’s nightmares). If you’re interested in me pushing myself to write fluid imagery about things that actually frighten me, then do stay tuned. 
> 
>  
> 
> We’re back in the powers/no powers ‘verse from Wait for Tomorrow. Choose your own adventure. This can be canon. It can also be AU. It does feature one-arm Bucky.
> 
>  
> 
> Title is from the 1998 20th Century Fox animated film Quest for Camelot (which was my fave until Titan AE came out in 2000, and that one remains a favorite today. Side note: anyone familiar with Titan AE? Would you be down for Titan AE fic? I’m kind of suddenly interested in making that happen.)
> 
>  
> 
> Ok, trigger warnings…see the tags. Most are for ch.2 (well, all of them are for ch. 2 except for the normal sicky ones). It might seem kind of weirdly extreme, but you know the fear landscapes in the Divergent books? That’s kind of what this is.

It’s one in the morning and they’ve been at it for hours.  Bucky’s burrowed permanently into the corner of the couch, glazed eyes staring through the TV and into the wall behind it.  He’s barely taking in a word of the underwater sort of nature show on the large flatscreen, though he thinks it might be about sharks.  That would make sense, as Bucky’s fairly sure he recently heard someone yammering about shark week.  The cool blue fish-centric shot changes to overly bright and stark-white as the focus is suddenly on a boat bobbing atop choppy waves.  The motion in the visual is making Bucky wonder if he is feeling nauseous after all, even though he just told Steve he wasn’t.

 

 

_“Are you sick to your stomach?”_

 

_“No.”_

 

_“Do you think you have a fever?”_

 

_“I don’t know.”_

 

_“Can I take your temperature?”_

 

_“No.”_

 

_“Do you want something to eat?”_

 

_“No.”_

 

_“How about a drink?”_

 

_“No.”_

 

_“Will you please drink something?_

 

_“No…”_

 

 

Then Steve had sighed and gone off to make a phone call, leaving Bucky there on the couch with the digital interpretation of a great white for company.

 

Bucky knows he did a pitiful job answering Steve’s questions, he just doesn’t have the…what, exactly?  words?  memories?  conceptualizations?  to connect the dots between what he’s feeling and what that means.  For whatever reason, be it trauma or drugs or Pavlovian conditioning, Bucky doesn’t remember how to call all the awkward quirks of the human body other than the vague and opulently un-helpful “I don’t know, I just don’t feel good.”

The TV is back underwater again, and although the quality of the blue-green light is easier on Bucky’s eyes, he doesn’t think he can stand to see the camera bob around another fish without his brain and stomach exploding in a spray of seawater.  He curls over the arm of the couch and buries his face in his forearm. 

 

The sofa cushion dips.  The scientist must have pulled the net-swathed shark up over the edge of the boat…  Steve’s hand comes down on Bucky’s shoulder.

 

“Hey,” Steve says quietly.

 

Bucky lets his back expand and contract as he deeply inhales and exhales.

“I talked to Sam,” Steve says.  “He says it might be good for you to try to take something and just go to bed.”

 

“Hm,” Bucky grunts into the arm of the couch.

 

“I know you don’t really like the idea of meds, but I have these,” Steve says, and Bucky can hear the thin cardboard box opening and something plastic moving around inside it.  “NyQuil gel caps,” Steve reads from the box.  “They’re supposed to make pain go away and help you sleep.  I took some last year when there was some kind of super flu bug going around…”  He trails off when Bucky starts to sit up.

 

“D’you want to try some?”

 

“No,” Bucky manages.

 

“Come on, Buck, work with me,” Steve says, gripping Bucky’s shoulder. 

 

Bucky’s sure half an aquarium will spill out if he opens his mouth, so he just shoves up from the couch and stumbles for the bathroom. 

 

Steve palms his own forehead and whispers, “Shit,” as Bucky brushes past him.  But as soon as Bucky’s retching over the toilet, Steve’s footsteps come running. 

 

“Hey, alright,” Steve says as Bucky gags.  The pressure behind Bucky’s forehead has to be at about 800 psi, and he swears there are several spare tires, a shark or two, and at least a hundred tropical fish swimming around in his stomach.  Nothing comes up.  Not even bile. 

 

“Ok, breathe through it,” Steve soothes.  Bucky practically feels the opposite sides of his esophagus touch as it contracts, trying desperately to push out something, _anything_.

 

He’s still hiccuping grotesquely when Steve gets an arm around his chest and pushes Bucky back against the wall.  “Ok, you’re done,” Steve says.  He leans back beside Bucky and massages the tight muscles of his stump arm.  Bucky’s still struggling not to punctuate each inhale with a gag.

 

“Do you remember the last time you ate or drank anything?” Steve asks.

It’s about the last thing Bucky wants to think about.  “Nuh,” he grunts.

Steve sighs.  “Do you wanna try for meds and bed?”

 

Bucky covers his eyes with his trembling hand.  “Don’t make me decide…” He rasps.  “Too fucking hard…”

 

“Ok,” Steve whispers.  “Ok.  Alright.”  He snakes his hand up around the far side of Bucky’s cheek and guides his head down onto his own shoulder.  “Just breathe a little bit.”

They stay still for a while.  Then Steve shifts to kiss the top of Bucky’s head and ease him upright.  He runs the sink and fills a waxy paper cup with water, then squats in front of Bucky again.

 

“You can rinse up or take a drink if you want.  I’ll be right back,” Steve says.  Then he disappears down the hall for a moment, and returns as quickly with the rattling box of meds in his hand.  Bucky hasn’t so much as moved.

 

Steve shakes open the small, garishly purple and orange box and tears open a blister pack with a plasticky crunch.  “Here,” he says softly, taking the smooth violet pills in his hand and proffering them down to Bucky. 

 

Bucky sets the paper cup on the floor, extends his arm hesitantly, and lets Steve drop them into his hand.  They feel like miniature grenades, though decidedly longer and thinner and smoother… He stares down at the capsules, wondering what on earth in these blatantly artificial things is going to make him feel better.  They look like plastic.   Nothing in nature can possibly be this color…Can he trust that it’s not poison?

 

But Steve trusts the medication, and Bucky trusts Steve.  He brings his palm up to his mouth and tips the pills down his throat.  They don’t go down when he attempts to dry swallow, so Bucky flounders for the paper cup of water, which he can’t remember where he put down.

Steve guides the cup into his hand, and Bucky gulps down the water, swallowing the pills and a decent serving of snot before pressing his wrist over his mouth to stifle a quiet belch.  He swallows hard to make sure nothing’s coming back up, and Bucky realizes his throat is burning.  And his head is throbbing.

 

“You ok?” Steve asks.  He’s cross-legged on the floor again, his hand on Bucky’s knee.

 

“I, uh…” Bucky starts, trying to find words for what he’s feeling.  He owes Steve that much.  “My throat.  And my head…”

 

“Your throat and your head hurt?” Steve repeats back.

 

“Hm,” Bucky affirms.

 

“Ok.  That’s good.  That you told me, I mean,” Steve says.  “I know this sucks.  Hopefully you’ll start feeling better tomorrow.”  He glances at his watch.  “Well, it is tomorrow.”  He scrubs his hand over his eyes.  “D’you want to try to go to bed?”  Steve’s screws up his eyes as he remembers that Bucky isn’t in the mood for decision making.  “Sorry.”

 

“Tired,” Bucky says.

 

“Good.  Let’s go to bed.”

 

“You’re tired,” Bucky clarifies.

 

Steve sighs.  “Yeah.”  He looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t.  “Yeah.”

 

They stay put for a minute, then Steve hauls Bucky to his feet and leads him to the bedroom.  Bucky immediately slides into bed, dragging the covers up over his ear as he curls on his side.  He’s not sure if it’s the fast-acting medication or if he’s finally feeling the effects of being awake and unwell for 20 hours straight, but he’s suddenly exhausted.  He feels almost drunk.

 

Steve materializes in bed beside him, and Bucky presses his cold feet against Steve’s warm legs. 

 

“Goodnight, Buck,” Steve whispers.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James experiences nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, ok, this is super weird. Like Alice off the deep end, odd, trippy, weird-ass stuff. 
> 
> If you just want a good little sickfic, skip this chapter and go straight to the end. But if you’re interested in the stuff of my nightmares, keep on reading.
> 
> This makes very little sense. My goal is to try to portray Bucky’s nightmares realistically by using my own nightmares as templates. There are a lot of Marvel references sprinkled through this section so it seems correct for Bucky’s brain, but all the scenarios are mine, from my subconscious brain.
> 
> I’ve tried not to go overboard with the gross, but I’m pushing myself to write vivid imagery about the things that terrify me. A lot of it might be odd and almost funny, but this is basically my fear landscape. Please respect that.
> 
> Oh, and Bucky will be known as James for this chapter. If you want me to go all junior year lang/lit on you, I could try to explain it with a lot of unnecessary symbolism and metaphors. But really, it’s just something I decided to do.
> 
> So, read on. Enjoy? Be terrified and disgusted? Feel what you feel and I’ll see you on the other side…

James is lying on his back.  Whatever’s beneath him is hard and concave, his shoulders forced slightly forward as his spine drops down.  His heart is pounding.  Slow, hard, wet beats ripple from the center of his chest through his body, reverberating in his fingertips and forehead.  Under the soft recoil, his forehead is throbbing.  There’s pain, but it’s distant and muted.  James feels as if his face has its own heartbeat synced up to the drum of his chest.

 

The thing he’s lying on is moving.  It’s shifting on a gentle wave motion, lifting and lowering, in the same tempo that’s overtaken his body.  The effect is sickening.  It’s also soothing.  James lets his eyes drift shut and follows the rhythm.  Even his breathing lines up:  two beats in, and two beats out. 

 

Then the motion changes.  The thing under his back leaves the rhyme of everything else.  The gentle bobbing stops as a scraping begins.  It’s as if the underside of the hard surface is caught on something, no longer suspended weightless.

 

James sits up, dragging vertigo behind his eyes.  Everything around him is robed in shadow.  A cold, wet breeze presses against his skin.  James looks down and realizes he’s in a rowboat.  The wood is bleached and dry-looking in the dim light. 

 

Peering over the edge of the boat, James expects to see glassy water, and at first he thinks he does.  Darkish, murky, shininess stretches on indefinitely.  James extends his hand down, balancing on the prickly wood with his stump arm.  He doesn’t find wetness.  The stuff the boat is resting on is thick and gritty, like yet-to-be-poured asphalt, but Bucky’s hand passes through it like sand.  Or like a cloud. 

 

Retracting his arm, James gazes upward to a dim starry sky.  The constellations are unfamiliar, but tiny pinpricks of light show like friendly flickers against an eternally expanding backdrop.  As he looks, James realizes there’s no horizon.  The up and the down are indistinguishable, running into and past each other until directionality is gone.

 

James blinks and looks straight ahead.  The boat has caught on something thick and dark protruding from the not-water.  It’s the color of an oil slick and the texture of alligator skin.  James leans forward on his knees and squints into the darkness.  He can barely make out the outline of a wide cylindrical shape that separates into a firework of arms far above his head.

It’s a tree.  James’s heard of mangroves, patches of trees that grow in the waters off the coast of Florida, but he’s never actually seen one and can’t begin to cross that against what’s in front of him.  Piecy, Halloween-like branches reach in every direction to form a dark canopy, and thick roots writhe about the base and dip under the boat into the not-water. 

 

James turns his head a fraction of an inch and sees another tree.  And another.  And another.  They’re sparsely placed around the area where he is, but they extend on and on, tightly packed together, into infinite amounts of space.  He tries to track them, follow the branches of one until they end in splayed twigs, then shift his eyes down the trunk of another, moving background to foreground, until his eyes alight on the one that’s caught the bottom of the boat.

 

Except it’s not there anymore.  The boat hasn’t shifted an inch, but the tree is oddly displaced.  It’s extended horizontally with top branches stretching into the darkness and grotesque roots exposed beside James’s shoulder.  All without so much as a sound.

 

The roots appear to be a mirror image of the branches.  They’re not clumped with dirt as James would expect, but dry and nobby.  James shifts an inch toward the roots to squint at them in the darkness, but he’s immediately scrambling backward when he sees they’re coated with what looks like a combination of maggots and gold dust.  He can hear the disgusting squish as the larvae scoot around on the roots and bump blindly into each other. 

 

James falls onto his back and uses his feet and hand to push himself into the corner of the boat.  His face is further away from the maggot-encrusted roots, but from this vantage point he has a full view as the quality of the not-light changes around him.  He suddenly sees that all the trees are uprooted, silently reaching in all directions with branches and putrefied roots.  Horror and disgust rises in James’s chest. 

 

The cold, wet wind presses James’s arms and face like clammy, dead hands.  He can hear the whisper, feel it in his bones.

 

_“It’s your fault._

 

_Your fault._

 

_All your fault…”_

 

 

*****

 

The boat smacks substantively into something with a loud, woody knock.  Cold water splashes James’s shoulder, soaking through his T-shirt and sending him up to a paranoid crouch.  The dilapidated wood is floating around one leg of an equally dilapidated dock hanging over the edge of a pond.  The water is dark navy and rippling as wind gusts, blowing James’s long dark hair across his face. 

 

Overgrown green grasses and cattails whoosh against each other, and huge dark grey clouds collide in the white sky overhead.  James squats and launches to his feet.  He struggles to throw his stump arm onto the dock before the boat capsizes, and he un-gracefully flops onto his back breathing heavily as he is grateful to be on land. 

 

James rolls onto his side and pushes himself up.  The landscape is hilly and green, yellow dandelions spotting the vast expanses of grass.  He stands on the narrow strip of ground where the dock meets the slightly soggy green.  James isn’t sure he’s ever seen such a peaceful, undisturbed stretch.

 

But there has to be habitation somewhere.  There’s a dock on the pond.  He looks around the other way and there’s a wide path of trampled tan grass and deep brown mud cutting through the massive green, as if someone’s driven a bicycle or a car or a tractor over this stretch day in and day out for the past decade.  James flashes his gaze to his muddy sneakers, and the trampled path ends—or begins—at his feet.

 

As soon as James starts walking, rain begins to fall.  It crashes evenly to the already-damp pastures like cold shower spray.  It’s a bit of a struggle to mount the hill as the path becomes slick, but James digs in his toes and jogs, following the tracks up and over the unblemished rural terrain until they abruptly stop.

 

Water pelts down on James’s head from the clouds above.  There’s a faded red barn and a blue-grey farmhouse at the bottom of the hill a hundred yards or so down the plain.  Both exteriors are far from freshly painted, but there are small signs of life all around.  A fenced-in area of ruddy mud is populated with whitish-looking livestock.  There’s a glisteningly wet emerald colored lawn mower outside the barn along with several bicycles.  Shiny streamers glimmer from the smallest bike’s coral-pink handlebars.  The upstairs windows of the house glow with a slight buttery illumination, and James can almost interpret shadows behind the creamy white curtains.

 

He slides down the hill, almost surfing as his sneakers lose traction on the wet, mucky ground.  He unintentionally breaks into a sprint to keep from tripping down the gentle slope.  The air starts to smell like animals when James is a few feet off from the fence.  It looks to surround a pigpen, brown-red dirt in small mounds and valleys around five or six snowy creatures reclined in the center of the enclosure. 

 

The smell changes as James gets closer.  The tang of raw meat that’s gone off looms threateningly under the oppressive odors of earthy farm and fresh rain.  Peering through the rusty wire, James looks for the whitish-pink pigs.  But they’re gone.  He can barely distinguish their bloated, red, rotting corpses from the mud through the blurring curtain of precipitation. 

James scrapes his teeth over his tongue to remove the stench of death from his taste buds where it’s starting to materialize into nausea.  He bends over for a second and hangs with his face in his elbow.  The barn is a few steps away, and James doesn’t feel his feet pound the squelchy ground and his stump arm connects with the dull red wood. 

 

James shifts so his back can rest on the barn as he gathers his breath.  The sickening smell is gone, and it’s replaced with something almost delicious.  Perhaps the inhabitants of the house are baking.  That’s probably not terribly smart, though, because the clouds are darkening by the second and the rain is coming down harder.  There’s a quiet, distant rumble of thunder.  James looks down at his soggy clothes, which are dripping cold, clear water onto the puddled ground. 

 

Except his stump shoulder is dripping dark, watery red.  Shoving his sleeve up, James gasps as he sees red blood and hacked muscle edged with dead white flesh and wrapped around a core of ivory bone.  He runs his fingers across the jagged wound, expecting to feel excruciating lightning.  But he feels nothing.  And his fingers come away clean.

 

James dodges the dripping eave of the barn and dashes over the flooded dirt driveway to the front porch of the house.  He pauses, wondering if he should ring the doorbell.  He looks, but there isn’t one.  There’s no knocker either.  In fact, the door is open.

 

 

*****

 

 

There is an enormous flash of lightning as James shuts the door behind him.  _One…Two…Three…Four…_   The crash of thunder is loud enough to shake the house’s foundation. 

“Hello?” James calls hoarsely.  He slowly steps into the entryway.  “I’m, I need…” he glances down at the sleeve covering his stump arm, looking for the blood betraying his grisly wound, but the grey fabric is clean. 

 

As soon as James realizes this, though, his shoulder is screaming in pain.  He wraps his hand around what’s left of his bicep and squeezes his eyes shut.  People have to live here.  Someone here can help him.  James pushes up the sleeve of his T-shirt and feels around his stump for broken skin.  There’s nothing.  It’s perfectly smooth.  Even the scars that normally stretch around his shoulder joint are gone.  But the whole thing is in agony like it’s being prodded with a hot poker.

 

James sees the lightning flash behind his closed eyelids, glowing red and yellow like splashes of neon finger paint on the inside of his skill.  _One…Two…Three…_   Thunder sounds, louder than a shotgun and with the same amount of recoil. 

 

James scrapes his eyes open and looks around.  The house’s entryway is dimly lit with the soft glow of lamps from the adjacent living room.  Muddy footprints mar the wood floor and braided rag rug.  A coat rack with built-in shelving is mounted on one wall, and it’s over-populated with jackets and hats and stuff that seems to be multiplying before James’s eyes.  He blinks hard and lets his vision track down the hunting vest and quiver of arrows to the faded denim jacket to the dirty yellow raincoat to the metallic pink puffer jacket.  Dad, mom, kid, kid.

 

The foot of a staircase is in James’s direct path, but he veers off to the living room instead.  It looks inviting and lived-in.  The coffee table is a mess of Lego and My Little Pony.  The couch cushions are dented and still compressed with petite butt-prints, as if kids were just there moments ago.  The red plush armchair set at an angle has a book set open over one arm, as if whomever was just reading the Harlequin Mystery intended to get up for just a moment and scurry back to the story.

 

James crosses between the coffee table and the TV, and the window behind him lights up.  _One…Two…_   The thunder smash makes James grind his teeth together and bring his hand back up to his spasming shoulder.  Multicolored sparks fly from behind the TV, and James leaps away, crashing his hip into the corner of a dining room table he surely didn’t see a moment ago. 

 

The table’s set for five.  The plates and glasses continue to rattle as James pulls his throbbing hipbone away from the hardwood.  A place card lazily faints to the tabletop, catching the aftershock tremors of the impact.  James leans over to read it.  It says _Mom_. 

 

James circles the table.  The place card at the next spot says _Dad_.  Next is _Cooper_.  Then _Lila_.  James gets to the head of the table.  He has to squint at the card, for it has three words written on it in childishly sloppy cursive.  _Guest of honor._   Is this some cheap old horror movie?

 

Lightning flash.  _One…_   Boom.  James’s vision goes black and he backs up until he hits the wall.  The thunder goes on rumbling and shaking the walls for what feels like minutes.  The residual light energy clings to James’s eyeballs, cutting the dining room with yellow-orange streaks. 

 

And it’s hot.  So hot.  The light is sweltering.  James scrubs his eyes with the heel of his hand, but the licks of citrus-colored heat don’t disappear.  They dance up the living room wall, consuming the television, eating up the white drapes…

 

The crackle is deafening.  James watches the flames jump to the armchair and curl the cover off the Harlequin paperback.  There’s a family somewhere here, about to die in a burst of electrical fire. 

 

James jumps through the living room before the couch and coffee table go up.  He’s at the foot of the stairs when lightning and thunder strike simultaneously and the house shakes.  It’s as if every explosive sound bubble from every Batman comic goes off at once and echoes in James’s ears as he collapses onto the hardwood floor. 

 

His spine contracts and he can feel electricity crackle in his arm and lets.  Something goes in his neck and his head cracks against the ground.  James can’t see anything but bright red and gold and pain and metal.  He tastes blood and bile and pain and then just black.

 

 

*****

 

 

James is in a hard, cold chair, and his forehead is pressed into a hard, cold table.  His eyes are shut and his hair curtains his face, but the bright fluorescent lights are too bright and his head fucking hurts.

 

“Stop playin’ sick,” a voice says, and thick fingers flick James in the top of the head.

 

James grunts.

 

“Sit up.”

 

James drags his face back an inch or so; the skin of his forehead rolling and kneading over his skull.

 

“Sit up, faggot.”

 

James opens his eyes a sliver and peers at his own chest through the lace of his eyelashes.  He’s wearing a white wifebeater that looks filthy even though his narrow visual field.  James lets his eyelids succumb to gravity and fall completely open.  His sense of smell seems to kick in with the slight movement, and he’s almost overwhelmed with body odor and the sickening stench of pus and infection. 

 

“Fucking sit up, douchebag.”  A hand embeds in James’s hair and yanks his forehead off the table.  James’s neck snaps back, and vertigo attacks him.  He tries to bring his hand up to mitigate the internal pressure and massage between his eyes, but his right hand is cuffed and chained to a hook in the wall beside him.

 

“Yeah, that’s better,” the voice says.  It’s coming from an ugly, pudgy face with purply mauve lips creeping out of unkempt brushy black mustache and beard.  The facial hair spills onto the chest of a blue shirt decorated with patches and badges.  “You gonna answer my fucking question?”

 

There wasn’t a question, at least not one James had heard.  He blinks and runs his tongue over his teeth.  James’s stump arm throbs, and he glances down at it.  Though his shirt doesn’t have sleeves, his shoulder is completely obscured.  The stump and the joint are wrapped in once-white bandages that are crusted in crystalline greenish yellow with specks of dried rusty red. 

 

The sight hurts his eyes.  His eyes hurt his head which hurts his neck which hurts his shoulder.

 

“I need…help,” James whispers.  “A doctor.”

 

“I told you to stop playing sick,” the bearded man says.

 

“No, my arm, my shoulder.  It’s infected.”

 

“It looks fine.”

 

James squints at the man.  “But—”

 

“You’re not gonna get out of this because you say you got a headache, or your arm hurts, or you need an inhaler.  You.  Look.  Fine.  Now answer my goddamn fucking question!”  The bearded man slams his hammy fist on the table.

 

_What fucking question?_   James is lost.  In shock.  His face is hot.  His hand is sweaty and prickling.  He’s going to throw up. 

 

“You don’t wanna talk?” the man says in a mock-soothing voice.

 

James swallows bile and looks past the obnoxious silhouette in front of him.  There’s a mirror hanging on the wall.  James hadn’t noticed it before.  He takes in what he can see of his reflection, pale and sweaty and exhausted-looking.  The reflection of the back of the man’s bulbous head is covering James’s shoulder.  He shifts in his chair to move his doppelgänger in the mirror. 

 

He gets a one-second glimpse of the stump’s clean, unblemished, un-bandaged flesh when the fist connects with his jaw.  James coughs and spits blood out onto the table.

 

“Checking yourself out, faggot?  Asshole?  I shoulda known.  You’re a fucking…gay…” he breaks off shaking his head.  “Do you wanna answer the fucking question?”

 

James leans back in the chair and grits his teeth, spit and blood spraying as he grunts, “What is the fucking question?”

 

The bearded man elbows across the table to grab James by the front of his filthy shirt.  “What. Did. You. Do?” he enunciates through a threatening grimace.  His teeth are yellow and tobacco stained and ready to jump into James’s tender flesh. 

 

James doesn’t move.  “I didn’t do anything.”

 

“Stop fucking lying.”

 

“I’m not fucking lying,” James says.  _What’s going on?  What happened?  What do they think he did?_

 

The man leans further into James’s face.  “Your boy, he’s next door, telling all the dirty about what you did.  If you don’t confess now, both of you are going down.”

 

“I don’t…?”

 

“Your blonde boy toy, your little fucking faggot, the one who’s so much more sweet and civil than you.”

 

“Huh?”  James can’t force his brain to track.  _Is he saying…?  But he wouldn’t…  He would never.  Steve would never… James would nev…? Would he?_

 

“Tell me what you did!”

 

James slams his forehead into the table, forcing the bearded man to let go of him.  “No!” he yells.  James slams the table again.  There’s blood dripping down his forehead.  “No.  No.  No…”

 

 

*****

 

 

James’s forehead bounces off the textured wall and slams back down into it.  His eyes are shut tight against the oppressive hum of electronic machinery.

 

“Sir?  What are you doing?”  The voice is high-pitched and thick with a Russian accent.  A small, cold hand clamps around James’s wrist.  “I go out to get your lunch so you don’t have to so much as get up, and I come back and what are you doing?  Literally banging your head against a wall.  Please don’t tell me you’ve been doing that the whole time.”  She’s yammering, yanking James away from the wall.

 

“Oh, dear, you’ve got a nice red mark.”  She grabs James by the knot of his tie and pulls him down to stoop so she can rub the pad of her thumb between his eyes.  “Now come sit.  Get back to what you’re supposed to be doing.”  She takes James’s wrist again and starts walking across the room.  Her artificially bright blonde beehive hairdo bobs between grungy grey cubicles until they arrive at a rectangular conference table surrounded by dilapidated swivel chairs in various shades of faded blue. 

 

At first the table looks empty, but James blinks and what appears to be an early-1990s Apple Mac computer and monitor suddenly shows up at the head of the table.  Its cords flail like spaghetti out the back of the machine and plug into a daisy chain of power strips that stretch over a utility cart before reaching the wall.  There’s a chair pushed up to the computer, its powder blue upholstery covered in deep burgundy bloodstains.

 

The woman pulls out the chair and gestures into it.  “Here, sit,” she says. 

 

James hesitates, but eventually does when she won’t stop pointing at him. 

 

“Here is your lunch.”  She drops a greasy McDonalds bag into James’s lap.  “Now get back to work.  We have an audit to conduct, remember?”

 

“What am I doing?” James asks.

 

“Do you have one of your silly headaches again?” the woman asks, pursing her lips in a patronizing face.  “The audit!”  She points at a pile of manila folders that’s suddenly in front of his empty left sleeve.  “You check the papers against the electronic files and give them a stamp if you’re happy.  Or you could torture the poor bastards that work here and make them do it all again.  It’s completely up to you.”

 

James does have a headache.  He looks from the stack of files to the obnoxiously flashing neon green cursor on the computer’s black screen.  _Files__Winter Soldier__Access?__Yes_/_No_

“Eat your lunch.  Get back to normal.”  The woman pats James’s shoulder and retreats to the other end of the conference table where she trains her eyes down and begins to write in a notebook.

 

James lifts the greasy bag out of his lap and sets it on the scant area of blank space that isn’t taken up with files or equipment.  He reaches inside and finds French fries.  James is suddenly ravenous.  He hasn’t eaten in days.  He jams the fries into his mouth and reaches for more. 

James chews.  The fries taste off.  Not bad, but not like fries.  And the texture is more like a pine cone than a potato.  He looks down at his hand.  He’s not holding pale golden slivers, but a pair of glistening black beetles. 

 

James drops them onto the floor and swipes at his mouth.  Masticated bug parts come off on his fingers, and he spits explosively at the floor, trying to spray essence of beetle from his tongue and teeth.

 

“What?  Are they not crispy enough?” the woman asks, looking up from her notebook.

James ignores her and drops the whole McDonalds bag onto the floor.  The blinking cursor on the computer screen is becoming too much.  His hunger vanishes as his headache increases.

James presses enter.  A list of document titles appear in strangled green font. 

 

_Winter_Soldier_Operating_Systems_

 

_Winter_Soldier_Handler_Training_Guide_

 

_Winter_Soldier_Emergency_Instructions_

 

It doesn’t mean anything, so James flicks open one of the dusty manila folders and shuffles out the pages.  There are hundreds of Excel spreadsheets full of tiny numbers and letters James can’t interpret.  Then something that looks like a guide for wearing police armor.  A pamphlet about nutritional supplementation. 

 

Fifty or sixty spreadsheets drop onto the floor, and the horrendous noise of bug wings beating against a solid surface tell James that the McDonalds beetles are eating the paper.  He changes is attention to the computer screen again. 

 

_Winter_Soldier_Diagram__Access__Yes_/_No_

 

James selects yes.  A grainy, pixelated drawing appears on the screen, done in tiny squares of black and neon green and flamingo.  The man has long, stringy hair and a blank expression and a stubbly jaw.  His singular arm holds the stock of an assault rifle.  The stump arm pokes uselessly out of the vest.  In the margin are various rough sketches of what look like jerky robotic prosthetics.

 

James jumps out of his seat and sprints toward the nearest exit, not caring that he carries dead beetles with him on the bottoms of his shoes.

 

 

*****

 

 

There’s a red Camaro parked in the first spot, glossy and brand new.  The driver’s side door is open.  The engine is purring.  The keys are already in the ignition.

 

James swings his legs into the car, reaches over to slam the door shut, puts it in reverse, and jams his palm against the steering wheel at 12 o’clock.  The tires screech as he speeds out of the parking lot and onto the street. 

 

Buildings flash by faster than James can read their marquees, but he gets an idea of the mix.  Grocery stores, barber shops, Vietnamese restaurants…

 

The city starts to dissolve into suburbs.  There are fewer blocky industrial buildings.  More sweetly triangular white-paneled houses with brick bases.  More pale turquoise cloudless sky. 

The signs are easier to read.  Potomac Elementary School.  Linda’s School of Dance.  Forsythe’s Fishery.  _What the fuck kind of name is Forsythe?_

 

Then the big grassy fields start.  Miles upon miles of dry brushy golden scrub that could easily be wheat or swamp grass or thick blonde hair…

 

James looks over the curves of the freshly tarred road and sees only rolling yellow stretching in every direction.  He rolls down the windows, takes a deep breath of fresh country air, and lets the needle on the speedometer slide down to a much more reasonable 35.

 

There’s something in the road.  Like a lost paper bag or a towel or a dead rabbit.  James squints at it as it gets closer, both longing to find recognition in the shape and dreading what it might be.  The Camaro pulls level with the thing and James watches it through the windshield, then through the side window.

 

It’s a dog.  A Chihuahua or a pug or something based on its size and coat.  James can see its sad face, black-rimmed eyes, nose, pitifully folded ears.  The car is yards past it and James is still looking over his shoulder.

 

The muffler collides with something that bounces off the hood, windshield, and onto the pavement with a squelchy crunch.  “Oh fuck,” James mutters, slamming on the brakes.  His right hand is sweaty and shaky, and he can barely force the car door open.

 

He’s sprawled out on his back, his limbs in a slightly twisted star, almost bent into a swastika.

 

 James kneels beside his head.  “Hey.”

 

The spray of blonde hair is bloody, the blue eyes are open and blank.

 

“Hey, man, you ok?” James asks with a tremble in his voice.

 

The lips are red and moist and ready to be kissed.  The nose is perfectly straight. 

 

“Buddy?”  James grabs a fistful of the blue and red T-shirt.  “Hey!”

 

He drops his face to Steve’s chest.  “Oh my god, oh my god, I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.  Come on, man…”

 

James is gasping for breath.  “Come on.  Come the fuck on.”

 

The siren sounds far away.  James doesn’t move.  It’ll take ages to get here. 

 

All of a sudden lights are flashing.  “Hands in the air!”

 

“You’re under arrest!”

 

James gets to his feet and takes off running.  Down the road, then veering into the tall grass.

“Put your hands in the air!”

 

James pounds through the grass, ignoring its sharp tips and edges tearing through his skin and clothes. 

 

Pain erupts in his stump arm as he watches the bullet fly out of his flesh and into the brush in slow motion.  James falls in slower motion.

 

He splashes into the pond, inhaling water and sending rippling waves to the shore.  James struggles to swim one-handedly, flailing for the dock.

 

“You’re under arrest!”

 

James hauls himself out of the water, the boards of the dock planting inch-long splinters into his palm.  James yanks one out with his teeth as he takes off running, and when he spits it out, it’s a maggot flying from his mouth.

 

There’s a building up ahead, something like a disused greenhouse of dusty windows.  James slams the side of his body against the glass and it gives way under the force of his chest and arm.  Black beetles cling to his clothing as James sprints through row after row of empty wooden boxes.

 

“Stop! Put your hands in the air!” The shout comes in from outside.  Lights in different colors flicker through the frosted semi-opaque walls.  James launches himself forward onto his stomach on the gritty concrete floor.

 

But it’s soft under his weight.  Flames are licking James’s arm.  The couch is on fire.  It’s burning, but not so bad.  Pain is nothing.

 

The hot breeze carries a whisper. 

 

_“It’s all your fault.”_

 

James tumbles off the sofa and ends up on his side on hard linoleum under fluorescent lights.  His stump arm is in agony and his head aches so badly he’s not sure he can stand up without toppling back over.

 

“Get up, faggot!”

 

The man has him by the hair, is shoving James’s head into a scratchy ring of rope. 

“Just jump, prick.”

 

James doesn’t mean to jump.  He just falls.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're going back to regular sickfic for the next chapter. Be grateful!
> 
>  
> 
> A little bit of visualization and trivia from the depths of my brain, if you want. The family is, obviously, Clint Barton’s family. The man is imagined as Desi Piscatella from Orange is the New Black. The woman is imagined as Ava Gabor from Green Acres. Forsythe is the actual first name of Jughead Jones from the Archie comics. These are not the actual nameless faceless that haunt my dreams, just tools for putting them into writing.


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve applies care and ice cream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is back in sickfic land. If you skipped Ch 2, just know there were nightmares involved.
> 
> And sorry this is so short. It wrapped itself up just a little too neatly.

“Buck?”

“Bucky?”

He still feels the rope around his neck, and he’s choking, choking to death.

“Buck, hey, come on. Wake up.” Steve’s on his knees beside him in bed, hands on Bucky’s chest and shoulder.

Bucky hacks on nothing but air and flails his right arm. He clips Steve’s shoulder with his knuckles, but it doesn’t seem to faze Steve as he rolls Bucky over into a recovery position.

“Breathe, ok?” Steve says. Bucky tries, but he coughs instead. His lungs are empty, and he sniffs in a gust of air that smells like sweat and shampoo and Steve.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers.

“Yeah. I’m here,” Steve murmurs, cooling the back of Bucky’s neck with his fingers. “It’s ok. You’re safe.”

Bucky exhales, then tosses his right elbow over his face and coughs until he almost gags.

“Do you need to throw up?” Steve asks.

“No,” Bucky chokes out. “Don’t think so.” There’s mucous running down the back of his throat, but Bucky’s barely nauseated. He’ll be fine once he gets his bearings. If that ever happens.

“Alright. Ok,” Steve continues to soothe. 

Bucky shoves himself up on his stump arm and Steve pulls him the rest of the way upright. His head goes right to Steve’s shoulder, and Steve runs his fingers down Bucky’s back until he’s breathing steadily.

As the terror and anxiety work their way out of Bucky’s system, his body reminds him that he’s ill. He collapses his weight into Steve under the pressure of his headache. 

Steve’s reading the alarm clock over Bucky’s head. “It’s 5:30,” he says. “I’m guessing you’re done being asleep.”

Bucky nods into him. It’s always like this after nightmares. He’s much better off going to the gym or watching a movie or making breakfast when he rises, terrified, at o’dark thirty.   
“How’re you feeling?”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Same. Shitty.” His voice is muffled in the neckline of Steve’s T-shirt.

Steve finds the back of Bucky’s neck under his hair again. “Yeah, you’re really warm.” It’s a small comfort that Steve doesn’t ask to take his temperature, and a larger one that the next thing he say is a statement instead of a question. “Let’s get up. Get something to eat.”

Steve’s idea of something to eat turns out to be pints of ice cream. Bucky gladly stands in front of the freezer door, enjoying the slightly stale breeze of frigid air on his hot skin.

“Come here,” Steve says. He’s got the cartons and spoons caged against his chest with one hand as he struggles to open the back door with the other. He slides open the glass and screen and waits for Bucky to step out.

Bucky sinks into one of the patio chairs on the tiny porch that’s just big enough for two patio chairs. Steve sits in the other and tosses one of the pints of ice cream to Bucky. It’s Haagen Dazs Vanilla.

“It won’t hurt if you puke it up,” Steve teases gently, handing Bucky a spoon.

Bucky gives him the finger, but lets his pinky trail lovingly across Steve’s wrist as he takes the utensil. 

Steve’s mouth is full of caramel ribbon when he says. “You don’t have to talk about it,” he licks the back of his spoon, “But if you do…I can listen.”

“God, I don’t know,” Bucky mutters. “It was…really, really weird.” He holds the ice cream between his knees and stabs at it with his spoon. “I don’t even know if words…”

They eat silently for a while, then Bucky says, “It’s like…all my fears, just…I don’t know.”

“The universe wanted you to face ‘em all at once?” Steve offers.

“Yeah, kinda. It was, uh…really bad.” He’s blinking back tears.

Steve reaches over to squeeze the shoulder of Bucky’s stump arm.

“Hey, you’re ok,” Steve says. “You’re safe. You’re here with me. You got your ice cream. I’m gonna get you over your damn cold. It’s gonna be fine.”

Bucky drops his spoon into the carton and places his own hand on top of Steve’s. He’s right. It is gonna be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this one came pretty quick, but my writing keeps pace with my free time and ideas, both of which are flowing freely right now. I hope to have maybe one more out soon, but i'm rapidly running out of fodder, and work might want me to start doing actual work sometime soon. Please send reqs if you have them. No promises, but grateful for any inspiration


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